


The Road Calls Me, Dear

by Dead_walking



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brother Feels, Gen, Hurt!Sam, protective!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 09:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1600748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dead_walking/pseuds/Dead_walking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Sam knows there's more to life than sleepless nights in the Impala. He wrapped himself around the smooth skin of that life for a year and a half before it ended in blood and fire. How could he be blamed for wanting more?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road Calls Me, Dear

Sam's not surprised to find his brother breaking into his home in the middle of the night. Looking back, he even expected the punch to the face and the quick jab of a leg that brought both brothers down to the ground. Dean was always quicker –  _stronger_. Every bit the hunter that Sam never wanted to be.

So maybe Sam's still a little surprised at how easy it is to lie to Jess, but he's been telling lies before he learned how to multiply. The biggest lie he's ever told: _I'm Sam Winchester, there really else isn't much to it._ And if he saw a shadow move in the corner of his eye, well, he passed it off as just a bird.

Sam  _was_  telling the truth though. He meant it when he zipped the bag shut and said, _I'll be back by Monday_. There was just something in the way that Dean asked Sam to help that he couldn't ignore. Dean wouldn't have come if he didn't need help and if Sam were honest, he didn't think he could turn his back on Dean again. Not when their father was missing. Protests came just as easily as justifications - the interview is on Monday. Dean's a big boy, he can handle himself, you promised yourself, Sam. Never again, you promised -he jumped into the Impala like he somehow belonged there. Besides, it was only three days, he could give Dean that.

_.  
._

The first hunt is followed by a second, then a fifth, and Sam is surprised at the ease of it all. He thinks back to the life he created for himself and vows he'll finish what he started. Get that diploma, a corner office; he’ll make good on his promise to himself, to Jess, he owes her that much. 

Ganking a ghost in the middle of Avilla, Arkansas just reinforces that he wants to live – a real life. But first, he'll track down his father and kill the demon that made blood drip onto his forehead. And in the meantime, if the gun fits perfectly into his hand _-_ _aim it higher, Sammy boy. You've got to make the shot count-_ he'll chalk it up to muscle memory and nothing more.

_.  
._

Dean holds their father's journal like a lifeline.

The pages flip with an increasing sharpness, like there isn't truth outside the black ink and smudged drawings. But to Dean, there was never, and will never be. It reminds Sam of times when math books were replaced with encyclopedias of pagan gods, when _I want to play soccer_ was overshadowed by Dean's firm _,_ _yes sir_. It reminds him of being told never to come back because he wanted something better for himself – a life outside of hunting (even if that meant outside of his family).

And maybe it should be good enough that he got away, snipped the binds that anchored him to a life of credit card fraud and giving fake names in motel lobbies. It should be enough that this is temporary, but it's not. The familiar itch of frustration is already making his neck stiff. A third breath is followed by a fourth, but he can’t quite swallow down the irritation that is beginning to stick to the back of his throat.

He tries to understand Dean's devotion to this not-quite-life, to a journal that can banish and kill and heal, a journal that traces history down centuries, but somehow, it can't help them find their father. He tries to feel the connection to a childhood that wasn’t empty stretches of highways and broken down motel rooms, but only feels torn pages and a worn down binding.

“Dean,” he starts, not even sure of what he wants to say. Four years ago he may have known the words to say to get through to Dean, but even that's a lie. If he knew the words then, maybe he wouldn't have left. Or better, maybe he would have been able to bring Dean with him. Now, well - Sam shakes his head and looks back towards the newspaper. They should be looking for their father, tearing apart every lead until they they find some shred of evnidence, not sitting in a hotel room looking up hunts.

Loving someone doesn't excuse you from wanting to grab them by their shoulders and yelling until you're red in the face. Dean’s smarter than this, he knows better than to be led down a dead end, but he jumps in with both feet when their father gives the order. The thought of it balloons in Sam's chest until it's hard to breathe. _We're wasting our time, Dean, you're wasting our time_ , the words threaten to jump off his tongue, but he finds a sentence that may be the key to laying the ghost to rest, so he lets it be.

"Everything alright there, princess?" Dean's question catches Sam off guard. (His presence throws Sam's life off of its current projection).

Sam takes a measured breath. "Yeah," he answers, ignoring the way his fingers hit the keyboard harder, "I'm fine." And if he sounds defensive, Dean let's it go with a lingering look and a shrug.

.  
.

He still doesn't sleep at night.

Nightmares crash into him like the riders of the apocalypse. Sam opens his eyes and counts to five before reaching for a glass of water. Trembling fingers have become as familiar as road signs and the heat of leather seats in the summer.

It was easy to distract himself when he was miles away and the phone was silenced after the first ring. Even easier when the phone calls stopped coming altogether. There was always a test to worry about, homework. Distracting yourself at three in the morning with nothing but the moon peering in from a drafty window isn’t as simple.

Sam watches Dean sleep and feels an ache pulling at his chest. He wasn't there to see the bags form under Dean's eyes. Doesn't know what caused the scar to his left knuckle or the one just under his hairline. It was always lingering in the outskirts of his mind; buried, but not quite deep enough to ignore the fact that Dean was being slammed into walls while Sam struggled over theories. Dean was taking out the sawed-off or machete as Sam curled around Jessica for the night. Dean was hurt and Sam wasn't there to help him.

But Sam was hurt, too (he still is).

Morning comes with red eyes, three aspirins, and a trip for two cups of coffee. He catches himself sometimes, when he drags his hands over his eyes and thinks:  _You'll get used to it, just give it time_. Coffee burns his hand when he squeezes his hands around the cup at the thought. Sam doesn't want to get used to it. He wants it to end. For good. He wants to move on with his life and do what he was meant to do (he drowns out the thought that he's already doing it).

Dean's awake when he gets back to the motel room. His brother looks from the clock to Sam – an increasingly irritating habit. "How much sleep did you get?" It's a standard question with just the right amount of cautious concern.

“Enough.” Sam’s smile doesn’t fool anyone. He takes a sip of his coffee, it's not good. "We should head to the farm," he says by way of avoidance. "Try to catch this thing before it morphs again. It may be our last chance."

There's an anxiety ridden second where Sam thinks that Dean isn't going to let the subject go. That he’s going to press and pull until Sam’s knuckles go white because, no, he doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t know how to talk about it to a brother he hasn’t seen in two years. His shoulders relax when he hears, "I'll drive."

.  
.

The first rebellious thing Sam ever did was try out for the basketball team. The last was moving to California to go to college. He almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

The thing is, Sam knows there's more to life than sleepless nights in the Impala. He wrapped himself around the smooth skin of that life for a year and a half before it ended in blood and fire. How could he be blamed for wanting more? Didn't he owe it to himself to wake up happy in the morning? Didn't Dean?

But Dean gave up on that life a long time ago-never understood the option between grocery shopping and breaking latches to abandoned asylums. Dean never saw a life for himself outside of his father and if he ever bothered to question anything, well, Dean's never been good and self-analysis past two shots of whiskey. Part of Sam wants to tell Dean he doesn't have to do this anymore. That once they bag this demon, it could be over for them all. But Sam's not particularly certain Dean wants it to end. Doesn't think he's remotely ready to even think about the possibility. Not while their father is out there and certainly not after he returns. 

And the hell of the thing is, Sam’s not sure who to pity more. The man who wasted his life chasing a demon around the country, the son who followed along without a single question or a doubt, or the son was so close to being free but allowed himself to be dragged back. 

Sam jumps for the phone when it rings. "Yeah," he says without breaking a beat, "It's archaic. Belongs to a water God and get this-" and he loses himself in his research because Dean needs him and that's enough, at least for now.

.  
.

He looks at Dean and says he's fine because he doesn't know how to say anything else. Add a touch of a smile and you get something resembling honesty. So maybe it's easier to lie than to turn things he doesn't understand into words. He says he's okay because it's easier than saying:  _I want to tear my head open because something is happening to me and I'm scared I'm losing my mind –Stop saying everything going to be okay because everything’s fallen apart and I don’t know how to put myself together – when did you become a stranger?_

And Dean scans his face with just the right amount of scrutiny. Dean's been living with shadows under his eyes much longer than Sammy has. He knows the warning signs, can pick them out with every nightmare and detached sigh. "Whatever you say," he responds, almost too willing to let it go. "Just don't go loopy on me, I'm counting on you to watch my back."

And Sam tries not to read into Dean's words. Doesn't try to realize that Dean needs Sam to be okay because if Sam's okay then Dean is okay and sometimes, that burden is too much to bear.

And maybe if they were a different family- one that spoke about school instead of hunts, that took vacations to water parks and zoos instead of satanic monuments and haunted ruins in the woods, Sam could sit Dean down and tell him everything he needs to say. Sometimes, Sam looks at Dean with just enough conviction to convince himself that he can start the conversation he's aching to have, but the words stick in his throat like glue. There are too many undercurrents, so much water that he can't even see the bridge.

Sam doesn't know how to fix it. He doesn't know if he can.

.  
.

The ache inside Sam grows, constricting his muscles and making him a little too aware of how his lungs press against his ribcage. He can feel it stretching inside him, burrowing deeper and swelling with every breath he takes. He knows he's allowing his obsession to take control, but Sam needs to find their father. He needs a lead to this demon so he can get his revenge.

.  
.

It's sleepless nights waved off by finals and a new party. A reoccurring nightmare that left him sweating and shaking in the morning. Sam tried to pass it off as being over-caffeinated or under-caffeinated, sleep deprived and overworked. But Sam knew what could be lingering in the darkness and if he chose to ignore the ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach, then he really doesn't have anyone else to blame but himself.

It's shaking his head on the outskirts of a graveyard. He told them it was stupid, just another ghost story; a waste of time on a Thursday night, but his knee is shaking in anticipation. Oh, Sam did the research. He knows this isn't anything but a hoax, but he also knows what can happen when people start poking around a graveyard in the middle of the night.

Jessica looks at him with bright eyes and laughs. "Sam Winchester, are you afraid of a graveyard?"

  
It's finding holy water and salt when he unpacks in the quiet of his dorm because even though Sam walked away, Dean still wasn't going to let go. Three steps from the trash, Sam reconsiders and sticks everything in the back of a drawer. Because even though he walked away, he’s still stubbornly holding on.

It's a hot, searing pain where his head used to be and Sam swears he's going to die here.  _Here_. In some motel that smells too much like peppermint and Lysol - where the receptionist can't even remember his (false) name. He would laugh if he wasn't stopping himself from screaming. He has a fraction of a second to panic. Words string together in a frenzied protest -  _not here, not like this. We're not even hunting_.

The table gives way to floor and breathing – he needs to breathe, why can’t he breath? Suddenly, there’s blue, a haze of a shag carpet, and the splintered reflection of a horse in a broken mirror. Another spike of pain and then there’s a face. No, a body, crouching in a corner. Something's wrong, so very wrong. Sam screams at the figure but it comes out as a choked sob.

He's torn from the vision by a solid pressure on both sides of his body before he registers the voice.  _Dean_. His fingers are still dripping from the shower, droplets of water slowly tricking onto Sam’s face. "What's wrong? What's going on?" Always there to carry him out of a burning house, to make Spaghetti-o's, and to bring Sam back from the brink of insanity. "What did you see?"

"Something's with him," Sam mumbles. "He's not safe." He pushes himself off the floor and stumbles. "We have to find him. We have to help."

  
Dean grabs Sam tighter, anchors himself in Sam's presence. "Who's not safe?" He asks and he still doesn't get it. "Talk to me, Sammy. Give me something to work with."

And Sam does.

Later, when Dean is searching through apartment listings with shag carpets, Sam watches him with a look that almost resembles affection. He's lost the grip on his old life, but at least he feels like he's finally getting back his brother.

.  
.

Three packs of Doritos, blue Gatorade, and a box of toothpaste that’s crushed at the corner. There was a time when his cart was full of pasta and eggplants and peppers –  _the yellow ones, not the green ones_ \- Jess always said before he headed to the market. She would cook and he would watch, refusing to think back to canned soup and stale cereal.

“It’s pasta, Sam.” She shook her head, but the smile reached her eyes. “Didn’t your father teach you anything?”

John taught Sam to aim for the head, and if that didn’t work, go for the heart. How to clean a gun so that it didn’t lock when you needed it. Only carry what you need, you never know when you’ll have to run and leave things behind. Sam could leave his apartment in the middle of the night and be prepared for anything that might jump at him from the shadows. Sam’s a survivor, a lesson Dean would say was the most important one of all.

But he never learned how to cook a chicken without the middle being raw or how to fill a dishwasher so the glass didn’t break.  So he shrugs, says: “I guess he just never had the time.”

“Well, I guess it’s time you learned.”

And Sam did learn. Just like he learned how to do laundry on a weekly basis and how to handle a part time job. It was perfect, Sam thinks, until it wasn’t. It all disappears when a car honks just outside the shop. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles and heads towards the cashier. He drops the items on the counter and tries to forget about eggplants and homemade pasta sauce.

.  
.

 _Was_. There was a time when Sam thought he could turn his back on his past and live a normal life- bills, thread counts, and matching towels in the bathroom. Sam lost the moment to wendigos and poltergeists, but he missed that door closing with an audible click. A year passes in what feels like a millisecond and a crawl and he can't quite get everything settled in his head. It started with Jessica and was followed by a plea – _We're just starting to be brothers again_ -and ultimately ends with another body consumed by fire.

It was one of those years when it was too much and not enough all at the same time. When he was cold all the time, even now, as he stands over a fire. Sam feels the ties that bind him to the person he thought he could be burning along with his father. Tomorrow, he will blow the ash off of his skin and move on from that life. There is something so numbingly final about mourning the man that started the hunt that would come to define him and his sons.

John Winchester is unrecognizable –covered in cloth and sage – and Sam is so tired of saying goodbye to people he's not ready to say goodbye to. He feels stretched and raw every time he says goodbye to someone he loved, someone he just couldn't save. There's a large (and growing) part of his mind that tells him this isn't over. This can't be over until everything that has taken mothers and brothers and children away from their families is dead. Maybe Sam couldn't be the son his father wanted him to be when he was alive, but he could make up for that now.

The fire pops and Sam feels something within him snap.

  
.  
.

The biggest lie Sam ever told:  _I'll be back by Monday_.  
The truth is: Sam was always, will always, be a hunter.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here it is, the first thing I ever wrote for the Supernatural fandom. 
> 
> Feedback is love!


End file.
